


Make it Work

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Paint The Sky With Stars [59]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Night World - L. J. Smith, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 08:47:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14951442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Marvel Cinematic Universe, Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes, vampire AU."During a house party, John runs into a famous pair of soulmates.





	Make it Work

“It’s not easy, is it?”

John was startled by the man who spoke to him. He whipped to his feet and spun around, ready to perform respectfully as a scion of the Sheppard House.

“Being half-vampire and living as a non-vampire,” the man said. He stood in the doorway, casually elegant in a suit, button-down shirt open at the collar, and a perfectly tailored jacket.

John recognized his dark blond hair and bright blue eyes and all-American handsome face. “Captain Rogers.”

“Haven’t been a captain in a long time.”

John had studied the marvel of Captain Rogers in his history textbooks, the super-soldier miracle who’d saved America from the Nazis. Only John had known the truth that his classmates would never know, that would never be printed in a textbook.

Steve Rogers had been the forbidden, the unthinkable, the love child of a lamia and a human. His father had been executed by the Forsaken (they made it look like an accident, in Flanders fields, surrounded by poppies). His mother had taken him into hiding, raised him.

He’d been a notoriously sickly child. The only reason he’d made it to adulthood was because his mother would let him feed enough to stay alive, starve him off of blood, and then begin the cycle again when the sickness started to eat away at him some more.

“Of course,” Steve Rogers said, “your other half is witch, so - you’ve never been human.”

John didn’t know what to say. He was fully witch now, because his mother was dead, and the Sheppard House had decided to outsource its vampiric enforcement, have John as a magical enforcer.

“Would you like anything to drink?” John asked, falling back on etiquette when other conversation failed him. 

Whenever vampires were guests, Patrick Sheppard had some loyal lamia bodyguards hypnotize some pretty boys and girls to be roving juice boxes for whoever’s gaze fell on them. 

“No, but thank you,” Steve said.

Then he turned, and John heard several seconds second after he did. Another vampire was approaching, footsteps inaudible to human ears.

John felt it before he saw it, the thrum of old, powerful magic in the air. Then Bucky Barnes stepped into the dim study John had chosen as his hiding place, and for one instant the entire place was lit by a lightning strike.

The silver cord.

Steve and Bucky were soulmates.

The super-soldier serum that Howard Stark had created wouldn’t have made any man a super-soldier, but Steve Rogers was half-lamia, and the serum had triggered the change in him. No one realized the truth in the chaos that followed, that Steve needed blood to sustain the change.

The tale of Steve and Bucky was both a warning and a legend: never fall in love with a human. Super-soldier (full-powered lamia) Steve Rogers set off on a solo mission to save Bucky Barnes, who was his human soulmate. Dr. Zola and Hydra had experimented on Bucky with a variant of the super-soldier serum. Steve, in an act of desperation, had tried to change Bucky to save him.

Bucky had been too old at the time, too far past twenty to survive the change.

But between the super-soldier serum and Steve’s lamia blood, Bucky survived. Became a super-soldier all his own.

The humans thought they’d crash-landed in a Antarctica to save New York from a Hydra bomb.

The humans weren’t wrong.

They just hadn’t realized that Bucky and Steve, soulmates and hopped up on blood willingly donated by Peggy Carter, a formidable witch in her own right, survived the crash and walked away.

Made vampires looked on Bucky Barnes, in his mid-twenties and handsome, with envy and fury. The Forsaken would have executed Bucky and Steve in a heartbeat had any of them thought they could have taken the two super-soldiers on. (Maybe they could have, but no one wanted to try, and now that they were both vampires and soulmates, The Council was willing to let it slide.)

Bucky stood beside Steve, devastatingly handsome in a bespoke suit, one hand in his pocket. He smirked knowingly at John, like he could read his mind.

“Trying to avoid the party, are you?”

“I just needed some - space,” John said.

Bucky raised his eyebrows. “You breaking up with the Night World or something?”

“Besides my brother, I’m the youngest person at this party by several decades,” John said. “The biggest political event in my life was when the Berlin Wall came down.”

Steve laughed softly. “Give it a few more decades, and maybe these parties will finally seem fun.” Then his expression sobered, and he said, “There’s a certain comfort, in sharing certain historical horrors with your peers, sharing memories and lived experience.”

John wasn’t going to explain that breaking up with the Night World was exactly what he had planned.

Bucky put an arm around Steve’s shoulders, squeezed, and for a moment John was fiercely jealous. He hadn’t had that kind of simple comfort since his mother’s passing, not from his brother, and certainly not from his father.

Bucky said, “There’s also a certain comfort in knowing that those times are past and are never coming back.”

“Something else is coming instead,” Steve said. “You’ve heard the Maiden’s Prophecy, about the coming Darkness, about the rise of the Old Powers and Wild Powers and -”

Bucky leaned in, silenced Steve with a kiss.

John averted his gaze politely. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen more explicit activity during high festivals, like Beltane, but these were his elders and he should respect them.

They kissed for a long time. Vampires didn’t need to breathe as frequently as humans did.

Finally Steve said, “Not in front of the children. And he’s an actual child.”

Not everyone who looked as young as John was actually as young as John. At seventeen, he was almost a man by human standards. 

Bucky said, “None of us Night Children are ever really children.” 

John cleared his throat. “If I may?”

“You may,” Steve said.

“How hard was it, concealing your true nature in the Armed Forces?” John asked.

“Why, you think Uncle Sam wants you?” Bucky asked.

“Super-soldier serum covered a lot of sins,” Steve said. “Peggy covered the rest.”

Like Steve and Bucky being soulmates.

“Of course,” Bucky said, “all attempts to recreate the super-soldier serum have failed.”

Because no other test subjects were vampires.

“What was it like?” John asked. “Flying. Only avian shifters ever get to really find out.”

Steve and Bucky looked at each other.

“Flying is incredible,” Steve said finally. “I’d do it again if it didn’t always remind me of the two of us almost freezing to death in Antarctica.”

“It was dangerous,” Bucky said. “Those were desperate times - for this country.”

“Not all the Elders saw it that way.” Steve’s expression turned mulish.

“Some of the Elders remember the Roman Empire and the Greek Empire and other empires the history books have forgotten. A world war, they called it. They were wrong.” Bucky shrugged. To John he said, “There’s a reason vampires and shifters don’t join up. If the military knew, they’d turn us into experiments, slaves, weapons. I’ve been an experiment before. No one deserves to go through that.”

John thought of the hunters who’d murdered his mother but said nothing.

“You should talk to Sam some time,” Steve said. “He’s a hawk shifter and also a licensed pilot. If you ever want to fly.”

“Your brother having an enforcer who’s a trained pilot could be useful,” Bucky said.

Sam Wilson, Steve meant. John nodded. “Thank you.” He smoothed his damp palms on his thighs. He didn’t want to be a bus driver of the sky. He wanted - more.

He wanted to get away from  _ all this, _ from hypnotized humans roaming the hallways offering their throats to strangers, from people who remembered the Roman Empire.

“Have a wonderful evening, gentleman,” John added, and ducked out of the room.

He wanted away from the Night World.

Away from the Old Powers, the Wild Powers, all the powers.

Away from the magic and the shapeshifting and the blood.

He’d make it work.

He reached into his pocket, felt the business card he’d taken from that Air Force recruiter out at the mall that day. A Sheppard was nothing if not an achiever.


End file.
